Funding for ambitious technology projects announced that will transform drug discovery

Funding for a series of ambitious technology projects set to transform drug discovery has been announced by business secretary, Greg Clark.

In this first wave of major initiatives, investment in the Rosalind Franklin Institute (RFI), Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire, a new £103 million UK facility, will enable the pharmaceutical industry to develop ground-breaking drugs faster, cheaper and better than before.

A £6 million investment will be used to create an advanced real-time video camera — key to a new technique using light and sound to eradicate some of the most lethal forms of cancer — a new project pioneering fully-automated hands-free molecular discover to produce new drugs up to 10 times faster, a new facility harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to generate new drugs for clinical testing within a few weeks.

New technologies such as AI and robotics will be utilised to improve an understanding of biology, leading to new diagnostics, new drugs and new treatments for millions of patients. Additionally, it will pioneer new ways of working with industry, as part of the UK’s AI and Data Grand Challenge, bridging the gap between university research and pharmaceutical companies or small businesses. This will build on the government’s modern Industrial Strategy and put the UK at the forefront of the industries of the future.

“The RFI will pioneer disruptive technologies and new ways of working to revolutionise our understanding of biology, leading to new diagnostics, new drugs, and new treatments for millions of patients Worldwide,” Professor Ian Walmsey, pro-vice-chancellor Research & Innovation at the University of Oxford and chair of the RFI’s Interim Board. “It will bring university researchers together with industry experts in one facility and embrace high-risk, adventurous research, that will transform the way we develop new medicines.”

The institute, which was named after pioneering X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, will follow in the innovative spirit of its namesake by developing unique new techniques and tools and applying them for the first time to biological problems.

It is an independent organisation funded by the UK government through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and operated by 10 UK universities.

Professor Philip Nelson, EPSRC’s executive chair, added: “As EPSRC is the main delivery partner for the Rosalind Franklin Institute, I am extremely pleased to see the Institute officially launched today. Research here at the Harwell hub, and at the universities that form the spokes of the Institute, will help the UK maintain a leading position in the application of engineering and physical sciences to problems in the life sciences.”